The Rise of a Fallen Angel
by PrincessDaydream77
Summary: After years of hoping that his wife would return to him, Valentine Morgenstern tracked down Jocelyn in New York and went to find her. Just half an hour earlier and Jocelyn would not have had time to drink the whole potion, leaving her a conscious captive of her former husband. But Jocelyn was always the one person who could change Valentine's mind; so what if she had been able to?
1. Familiar Footsteps

The Rise of a Fallen Angel

Summary: After years of waiting in hope that his wife would return to him, Valentine Morgenstern tracked down Jocelyn in New York and went to find her. Just half an hour earlier and Jocelyn would not have had time to drink the whole potion, leaving her a conscious captive of her former husband. But Jocelyn was always the one person who could change Valentine's mind; so what if she had been able to do so?

Disclaimer: I only own the idea; Cassandra Clare owns everything else.

Chapter One

Clary and Simon had barely left the apartment when Jocelyn closed the door behind them, and their voices were still audible as she leant back against the door, sliding to the floor against it with a sigh. It seemed that it did not matter how much of an effort she made; her daughter would never listen to her advice.

She knew that it would be hypocritical to judge Clary for her rebellious behaviour, when she had been precisely the same at her age, but things had been very different then; she had been vigorously trained since the age of sixteen to fight the dangers of the demon world, the very dangers she had hidden from her daughter's eyes for all these years. She had always thought that hiding the darkness of the life she had left behind would be safer for Clary, but it seemed that the young woman was hell bent on making her mother's efforts futile.

Jocelyn sighed slightly, shaking her head, before moving to rise, deciding to make a start on a new painting to take her mind off her worries for Clary. Painting had always calmed her nerves in the past, ever since she had been a child scribbling on scrap pieces of parchment, and she hoped that it would have the same effect now.

But just as she moved away, she heard hushed voices on the landing. The voice was clearly a man's, judging by its depth, but it sounded nothing like Simon's, or like Luke's, the only other male who would ever visit the apartments. '_It's probably just one of Dorothea's customers.'_ she told herself, trying to remain calm. But there was an air of familiarity in the voice that told her that could not be the truth.

The wood was obscuring the subtleties of the man's words and Jocelyn's burning curiosity led her to take away the barrier, opening the door slightly with the intention of putting her head around, to catch a quick glimpse of the figure and see if she recognised him. But it took only a single sentence for her to slam the door again, locking it as securely as she could do.

"It's time for her to come home."

Breathing heavily, Jocelyn sprinted across the room, lifting a heavy sideboard and shoving it up against the door, doing the same with the floral armchair she had always loved so much. She could hear footsteps on the staircase now, heavy and clunking, the result of the heavy boots many Shadowhunters wore. _He _always wore.

There was a heavy smell in the air now, the kind of smell that could be found in the landfill site she had once passed by on the outskirts of town. The smell of rotting garbage; the smell of _demons_.

Immediately, Jocelyn thought of her daughter and reached into her pocket for a mobile phone. There was no time to call, so the woman quickly tapped out a text message telling the girl to go to Luke's and stay there. She could only hope that Clary had enough common sense to listen, or at least to stay away for long enough that the intruders would be gone by the time she got here.

Panicking, Jocelyn staggered away from the door, glancing frantically from side to side in search of a weapon, anything that could help her defend herself against that horrid man. Suddenly, she remembered the box underneath her bed. She had spent so much time trying to forget the life she had once lived that she had hidden it within the disarray of two dozen other boxes. '_I only kept it for dire emergencies.'_ she reminded herself, but if this was not an emergency, then she did not know what was.

As she dove for her bedroom, Jocelyn heard the front door shatter and could not help but shriek with fear. She only had a few seconds, half a minute at the most before he would be upon her. She had to act fast.

Tearing her way through the boxes, the redhead finally found what she was looking for. It was a small simple box made of varnished wood, with the initials 'J.C.' embossed on the top of it. Every year, on her son's birthday, she had retrieved this box from beneath her bed and spread the contents out across her bed, allowing herself a few precious minutes to mourn the son who had been taken from her while still in her womb. She had never thought about the other secret it contained; she had never really imagined she would need it.

Jocelyn pulled the loose base from the box and retrieved the small glass vial that had been hidden within it. The woman took a moment to examine the shimmering emerald liquid it contained, then took out the stopper and raised the vial to her lips. At that moment, the door burst open.

Everything happened so quickly. The dark-clothed figure sprinted across the room with surprising agility. The vial was knocked from Jocelyn's hand with such force that it shattered against the opposite wall, leaving a green stain in its wake. The world around her began to swim, her vision blurring.

Without warning, Jocelyn's legs collapsed out from under her. She opened her mouth to cry out as her head collided with the wooden floorboards, but found herself unable to make a sound. All she could feel was the agonising pain and the vague sensation of a hand stroking the hair away from her face.

Her final thought was of Clary before the darkness overcame everything.

A/N: Please review!


	2. Memories of a Different Time

Chapter Two

A/N: Thank you to inkblotblue, Geekgirl - book lover and Lmb111514 for reviewing my first chapter.

The first thing Jocelyn noticed when she awoke was the smell. Rosewater. It was a smell that had surrounded her all through childhood, one that she had missed desperately when she had first left Idris, when the only smells surrounding her were petrol fumes and refuse. Jocelyn had never smelt such a scent outside of her home country. In fact, the roses in Idris were unique.

The redhead gasped quietly as a wave of realisation swept over her. She was back at home.

The house was, of course, not the manor house she had grown up in, for fifteen years ago, that house had been reduced to nothing but a pile of rubble and cinder reeking of demonic influence, but this room was decorated in a startling similar way to her old bedroom. The bedroom she had once shared with...

Jocelyn's eyes grew wide as everything came into focus. Instinctively, she tried to get up, tried to run away just as she had done before, but found something holding her back. Her wrists were chained to the headboard of the bed, making any attempts at escape completely futile. '_I'm trapped.'_ she thought despairingly. '_Trapped with the one person I had prayed to never have to see again.'_

As if summoned from her thoughts, Jocelyn heard the sound of heavy footsteps approaching the door of the bedroom. Those footsteps had been a warning for her before, a herald of fear, and once again she used that warning to prepare herself. She closed her eyes and lay down as flat as she could, trying to ignore her racing heart and breathe evenly, as if she were still sleeping. After so long apart, she could only hope her husband had forgotten her skills as an actress.

She had hardly been settled for a few seconds when Valentine entered the room and tried not to flinch as the door clicked shut behind him. All these years, she had thought she had left her past behind her; over that time, she had barely considered how much he still frightened her.

Valentine's footsteps were slower now, as he approached the bed she lay on. It was almost as if he had been running, in the hope that she was awake. '_Could he really have been so desperate to see me?'_ Jocelyn wondered. There was the tiniest section in her heart that remembered the warmth of their former relationship and how special she had always felt when Valentine was by her side; now that he was near her again, that section somehow seemed to be growing.

The bed creaked slightly as the man sank down onto it, the sound merging seamlessly with his sigh of disappointment. Jocelyn could feel the warmth coming from her husband's body, such was his proximity. She had not been so close to him in so long.

"Hello, Jocelyn." Valentine greeted, stroking a stray tendril of hair from across her face.

Jocelyn froze with terror, fighting to keep her expression neutral. '_He knows I'm awake.'_ she told herself and almost winced with fear. But just as she was about to give the game away, to open her eyes and face him with the same determination and strength she had shown in her youth, her husband continued to speak.

"I know that you probably cannot hear me, but I wanted to speak to you nonetheless. I've wanted to tell you this for a long time. I never thought I would have the chance, but now that I do..." the Shadowhunter began, his voice laced with melancholy. '_He thinks I'm still sleeping.'_ Jocelyn realised, much to her relief. However, her relief was short-lived, for shock was quick to replace it. "I wanted to tell you how sorry I am."

Jocelyn bit the inside of her lip to stop herself from gasping. Of all the things Valentine could have said to her, that was the last she would have anticipated. He was apologising. All he had done wrong, all the heartache he had caused her, all the sleepless nights in the last two decades... and now he was apologising for them.

"I know that I've been an awful husband, an awful father." Valentine confessed, taking heaving, shuddering breaths, as if he feared that he would begin to cry at any moment. It was a rarity to hear Valentine Morgenstern sound so vulnerable. "I promised in the Great Hall that day, when I took you for my wife, that I would always keep you safe, that I would cherish and care for you until the day I died. I failed in that and in my duty to Jonathan. You were the most important things in my life and yet steadily I tore you both to pieces."

Valentine paused a moment, choking on the sobs that threatened to overwhelm him. He fought on, of course, as a Shadowhunter always would. '_Once a fighter, always a fighter.'_ Jocelyn thought, though a great deal less bitterly than she would have done in the past.

"I know that no words can change what I've done, but I hope that my actions from now on may start to make up for the pain I have put you through." Valentine rose from the bed, his speech now completed. His footsteps began to recede, along with the sound of the man violently wiping tears from his face, as if he was ashamed he had ever cried. '_He was never ashamed to cry, not with me.'_ Jocelyn thought. '_But then again, that was only with me, and I have been gone for fifteen years. Perhaps he hasn't cried since then.'_

He was so quiet that Jocelyn had thought he had gone from the room. She had been about to sit up properly in her bed when she heard the whisper from the doorway.

"I love you, Jocelyn. You never left my heart."

Then he was gone. For a moment, Jocelyn considered calling after him, to tell him that she had heard what he said. But he was still Valentine Morgenstern and she still hated him. Or at least she should have done.

For once, Jocelyn listened to her head rather than her heart and bit her tongue. There would be plenty of time to speak to him in the future, for sure, as she knew her husband all too well. Now that he had found her once more, she was under no illusion that he would ever let her go.

A/N: Please review!


	3. Strangeness

Chapter Three

A/N: Thank you to Geekgirl - book lover, Rose Attack and RandomPotterhead for reviewing the last chapter.

Valentine came to visit her again at midday and once more at dinnertime, but each time she heard his heavy footsteps on the landing, Jocelyn lay silent and still against the pillows, pretending to be sleeping. She spent all of her time alone planning what she would say, but whenever her husband came near, she decided once more that she had not planned enough. '_I wonder if I'll ever have planned enough.'_ she asked herself repeatedly.

It had been so long since she had lived with Valentine, she had forgotten how perceptive he could be. He had known she was carrying Jonathan long before she had, he had seen her despair when she had tried to hide it behind a smile... and on many an occasion, he had known she was awake, even when her eyes had been firmly shut. So, for all her conscious efforts to keep her breathing slow and even and her body limp and unresponsive, it all came to nothing.

"It's no use trying to fool me, Jocelyn. I know you are awake." She was so shocked to hear Valentine address her directly that she jolted and immediately regretted her lack of control. If the man had not known she was lying, he certainly did now. Accepting defeat, she slowly opened her eyes. She could not conceal a gasp at the sight which greeted her.

Over the years, she had imagined Valentine becoming a monster in appearance as well as in deed. Even when he had visited her, time and time again, she had pictured him with Jonathan's deadened eyes and a vicious smile. She had not expected this.

The man stood before her was every inch the man she had married all those years ago. Age had barely seemed to mar him, as she knew it had begun to do to her. His eyes, though still the deepest black, seemed to hold the same concern that she had once adored. '_I thought he would have been so different, but he hasn't changed at all.'_

Jocelyn shook her head faintly, trying to clear it of these useless thoughts. Perhaps Valentine truly had not changed... but _she_ had. '_I spent so long trying to get away from him, to keep Clary away from him.'_ she reminded herself. '_I cannot fail now, not after so long.'_

"Jocelyn." Valentine spoke again, trying to attract her attention. He was ignored. A frown spreading across his forehead, Valentine reached out to brush his hand against her cheek.

Jocelyn started, moving backwards so quickly that she almost fell from the bed- or would have done, had the chains on her wrists not fastened her to it.

"Don't touch me." Jocelyn breathed, shrinking away from his hand.

She did not know what she had expected to happen, but it had surely not been this. For the first time in many years, Valentine obeyed her command and left her be, shifting to the edge of the bed to give her a little more space. In the later years of their marriage, her husband had been protective and controlling and constantly fulfilled his need to assert his authority, even more so once he started to realise she doubted him. To see him obey her wishes... it was strange, to say the least.

"I apologise." It seemed the surprises would keep on coming; another thing Valentine had rarely done was apologise in earnest. "I've been alone for quite a few years now. I'm struggling to remember how I ought to behave around a beautiful woman."

'_At least that's something I recognise.'_ she thought, struggling not to chuckle at Valentine's feeble attempts to flatter her. She had always made fun of Valentine's charm, back in the early days at the Academy- somehow, she had forgotten to do so once he had turned it on her.

"What do you want from me, Valentine?" Jocelyn questioned, trying her best to imitate the imperious tone her husband had always used at the Circle meetings.

"I wanted to see you." Valentine replied, shrugging in the elegant way only he seemed to manage. "I've missed you."

When Jocelyn laughed, there was no humour to it, only a bitter disbelief. "You missed me? That's not possible. You need to care about people to miss them, Valentine. You've never cared about anyone but yourself."

Valentine's expression was not dissimilar to that of a puppy kicked by its master. "I thought you, of all people, would understand, Jocelyn-"

"There's nothing to understand." his wife cut across. "You haven't changed at all. You don't care about me, you just want a tactical advantage. Well, I'm not going to tell you anything, so you might as well leave me alone."

Valentine paused for a moment, seeming to be deep in thought, before he nodded his head in resignation, standing from the bed.

"Very well, then." the man conceded. "I'll leave you in peace."

And so he turned on his heel and walked for the door, leaving a stunned Jocelyn in his wake. The woman had never seen Valentine Morgenstern so submissive; it made her quite uneasy.

Just as he stepped across the threshold into the hallway, Valentine turned to face her once more. Jocelyn swallowed her fear and raised her head up high, hoping that her husband would not notice her shaking hands or the equal tremors of fear in her eyes. '_He's going to torture me.'_ she realised. '_That's why I was going to take the potion in the first place, so that he could not find the Cup. So that he could not find Clary. It was all for nothing.'_

She waited for pain, but it did not come. Instead, Valentine smiled fondly at her, the way he had always used to do, back when they were happy.

"I'll have those shackles removed for you. Whenever you wish to see me, you may come and find me. I won't have gone far."

And with that, he swept out of the room, leaving Jocelyn alone and confused in his wake. This was a man she despised, a man who had tortured innocent creatures and turned his own child, _their_ child, into a monster. So why, then, did his smile make her heart skip a beat, just as it had done when they were young?

A/N: Not great, I know, but still... Please review!


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